September 8, 2022. Amazon’s first-ever Thursday Night Football broadcast pulls 13 million viewers. Inside NFL headquarters, executives are reportedly stunned — not by the number, but by what it represented. That single night signaled that the biggest media shift in professional sports history was already underway. The contracts being signed that same year? Most of them were still written for a world that no longer existed.
Let’s start with the number that should make every sports executive uncomfortable: $113 billion.
That is the combined value of the NFL, NBA, and MLB’s current or most recently negotiated broadcast rights packages. Billions locked into multi-year deals with traditional network partners — NBC, CBS, ABC/ESPN, Fox — at a moment when 82% of sports fans aged 18 to 34 now stream their content primarily through digital platforms, according to a 2024 Nielsen Sports Report. The contracts were written for the living room. The audience moved to the phone.
The Gap Nobody Wanted to Admit
To understand why this matters, you need to go back to 2021.
That was the year the NFL locked in its $113 billion, 11-year media rights deal. It was the largest sports media contract ever signed. It included Amazon for Thursday Night Football, which looked forward-thinking at the time. But the rest of the deal was structured around linear television in a way that assumed cable households would hold steady. They did not hold steady. Between 2021 and 2024, the U.S. lost approximately 25 million cable subscribers, according to MoffettNathanson Research. That is not a dip. That is a structural collapse.
The NBA’s deal, finalized in 2024 at roughly $76 billion over 11 years, did move more deliberately toward streaming. Amazon picked up a package. NBC returned. But here is the problem nobody in the room wanted to say out loud: the audience fragmentation those deals were designed to address had already accelerated past the solutions being negotiated.
Did You Know: The NFL’s 2021 broadcast rights deal included eight separate distribution partners. A fan who wants to watch every game their team plays in a single season may need access to as many as four different platforms, depending on their team’s schedule and market location, according to Front Office Sports.
Does that sound like a system designed with the fan in mind?
Where the Real Action Is Happening
Tony Reali, the longtime ESPN host and media fixture, said something in a 2023 Sports Business Journal interview that barely made headlines but should have. He noted that the real leverage had quietly shifted from the networks to the platforms — and that traditional sports media was still negotiating as if it held cards it had already played. He was right. And almost nobody ran with it.
The action right now is not at the network level. It is at the regional level, and it is a slow-motion disaster.
Regional Sports Networks, known as RSNs, were once the backbone of local team broadcasting. Diamond Sports Group, which operated under the Bally Sports brand and carried games for more than 40 professional teams across the MLB, NBA, and NHL, filed for bankruptcy in 2023. By late 2024, multiple MLB teams had been forced to find alternative broadcast arrangements mid-season. Fans who had paid for cable packages specifically to watch their local team found themselves locked out, with no warning and no refund.
This is not a minor inconvenience. This is what happens when a $113 billion macro-deal coexists with a crumbling local infrastructure. The big money flows upward. The fan experience fractures downward.
Warning: Before you renew any cable or satellite package this year, check whether your regional sports network is still operating and solvent. The Diamond Sports bankruptcy affected Bally Sports RSN coverage for teams including the San Diego Padres, Cleveland Guardians, and Oklahoma City Thunder, among others. Do not assume last year’s package still covers this year’s games.
What Fans Actually Need to Know
Forget the boardroom math for a second. Here is what this means for you on a Sunday in October, trying to watch your team.
A 2024 survey by Sports Media Watch found that the average American sports fan who follows two or more professional leagues is now paying for 3.4 streaming or cable platforms to maintain consistent access to their teams’ games. That number includes one legacy cable or satellite package in most cases. The monthly average across those subscriptions comes to approximately $147, up from $94 in 2021 — a 56% increase in three years.
How many platforms are you actually paying for right now?
The shift to streaming was supposed to make sports more accessible. In some ways it has. Amazon’s Thursday Night Football is included with Prime. Apple TV+ carries all Friday Night Baseball at no additional charge for subscribers. But the overall picture is one where access has been redistributed, not simplified. Fans following multiple leagues are paying more, across more platforms, with less certainty that those platforms will carry their team’s specific games.
When did watching your team become a logistics problem?
Do you actually know which platform carries your team’s playoff games right now? Not the regular season, not the national broadcast — the specific playoff game your team might play next month. If you had to think about it for more than three seconds, that is the problem this article is about.
Nobody is talking about this as loudly as they should be. The $113 billion number gets coverage. The fan cost breakdown does not.
The Prediction You Can Take to the Bank
Here is where I will go on record: the next round of NFL negotiations, expected to begin influencing deals as early as Q1 2026, will force a reckoning that the 2021 deal avoided.
The pressure points are real. Cord-cutting is not slowing. RSN infrastructure is collapsing. And younger fans, the audience every league needs to survive the next 20 years, are not signing up for $150-per-month cable packages. A 2024 Deloitte Digital Media Trends report found that Gen Z sports fans are 3x more likely to watch game highlights on social media than to watch a full broadcast on linear television.
Leagues will not abandon television money. The numbers are too large. But the structural bet that cable households represent a sustainable foundation for a $113 billion contract is a bet that is losing collateral every single quarter. The restructuring is coming. The only question is whether fans will be treated as the priority when it does, or whether the next deal will be just as complicated, just as fragmented, and just as expensive to navigate.
My money is on complicated. But the pressure is building in a way it was not in 2021. And that matters.
Pro Tip: League-direct apps are currently your best hedge against RSN instability and platform fragmentation. MLB.TV costs $24.99 per month or $149.99 per season and covers all out-of-market games with live and on-demand access — blackout restrictions apply for local markets. NBA League Pass runs $14.99 per month or $99.99 per season and gives you access to out-of-market games across the full 82-game schedule, including replays. NFL+ starts at $7.99 per month and covers live local and primetime games on mobile devices, with the premium tier at $14.99 per month adding full replays and NFL Network. None of these replace full local coverage, but they are the most stable options if your RSN situation is uncertain.
Your Next 3 Steps
Step 1: Audit every sports subscription you are currently paying for and calculate your actual monthly total. Write down every platform: cable, satellite, streaming, and any league-direct apps. Then map which teams and which games each one actually covers. Most fans who do this exercise discover they are either overpaying for redundant coverage or missing their team’s games on a platform they do not have. This takes 15 minutes and will tell you more than any analyst breakdown.
Step 2: Check your RSN’s current contract and operational status before renewing any annual plan. Go to your RSN’s website directly or search “[your RSN name] 2025 status” to verify it is still active and carrying your team’s games. The Diamond Sports bankruptcy was not a one-off. Regional sports broadcasting is under structural pressure, and assuming last year’s setup still works this season is a real financial risk. If your RSN is in flux, move to a league-direct app as your primary source now, not after the season starts.
Step 3: Set a calendar reminder for Q1 2026, when NFL media restructuring conversations are expected to accelerate. Do not lock into any new annual sports package before that window. The deals being shaped in that period will determine platform distribution for years. Locking into a 12-month commitment in late 2025 without knowing how those negotiations land is exactly the kind of timing mistake that cost fans like Marcus real money when they moved too early on a changing market. Watch the Q1 headlines. Then decide.
